Following the tragic death of a 30-year-old woman in China, in which the mother narrowly saved her son's life moments before plunging through the flooring on an escalator, many shoppers are undergoing dramatic changes to how (when, if) they transport themselves on escalators all across the country. As others note, the growing social media presence of these new escalator travel techniques is likely a tweetable concoction of both genuine concern for one's safety and the usual 'grammable trend (think planking, et al).
Using China's wildly popular social media site Weibo, shoppers have been sharing their own methods (see video above) of escalator avoidance — including (but certainly not limited to) patented moves such as The Poke & Prod (in which one checks the stability of the flooring using an umbrella or a wooden stick of some sort), The Split Float (in which one lifts his or her legs above the final step during escalator travel), and the traditional Foot Tap Test (in which one simply taps the surface with a toe or one's whole foot before trusting it to support further weight).
As sadly expected, many are simply using this resurgence in fresh escalator travel methods to place themselves in even deeper danger by attempting to revive the aforementioned planking trend:
